Is there a specific reason we're still doing ground based astronomy? With satellites becoming ever cheaper, sure we at some point should be able to get a significant telescope up there right? Are we waiting for the bigger rockets to accomplish that?
Perhaps a review of telescope design is in order: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_telescope
Building large telescopes is hard enough. Putting them in orbit just adds to all the costs. Look at the James Webb Telescope (which still hasn't been launched). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
It seems possible to launch multiple small telescopes and operate them as one large scope using aperture synthesis. I don't know if there are any existing designs or plans for this.
Also: somewhat ninja'd, see other replies as well.
We know how to do that in radio (VLBI), have some experience in IR (ALMA), are doing research on how to do that in optical. But in practice that is much harder than you think. The relative distances of the telescopes have to be known and constant to within a few fractions of the wavelength you are using. Hard when you are using centimeter radiowaves, insanely hard with optical light that has 600 nanometers wavelength.
A high-quality 24" or 1-meter university-grade observatory telescope can be had for well under $1 million. If you multiply that by a factor of 100 to mount it on a satellite, you're still at 'just' $0.1 billion and can buy a whole Ariane-5 launch just like the JWST to put it at your desired orbit for $0.15B, for a total of $0.25B (a Falcon Heavy runs about half the cost for a launch). You could launch 30 of those (hopefully improving your factor-of-100 cost increase to something more manageable) for less than what the JWST will cost.
I get that JWST is a 6.5 meter telescope, not a piddly backyard 24" device, but why do we have to launch the best single scope possible?
There are only 7 visible-light space telescopes listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes#Visib.... I wish there were 70 or 700, with live Internet feeds.
JWST is not the first IR telescope (Spitzer Space telescope, retiring this month comes to mind, 0.85 m diameter primary), but its size will allow both improved resolution (diffraction limit falls like 1/diameter) and improved collection efficiency (grows like diameter^2). Without constellation-flying and interferometric telescopes (see Keck Observatory), one cannot get either one from an array of small telescopes.
There are a lot of scientists grumpy about JWST because of its huge budget, but as long as JWST works, the view it gives of our universe will be spectacular. At this point, I think everyone really wants JWST to work, as so much has been sacrificed to make it possible.
Making things survive in space is hard. Working functionally for the lifespan of the telescope is really hard. There's not a lot you can do once it's up there.
That thought exercise should give you 90% of the answers to your question. The atmosphere and light pollution from cities are pretty easy to counteract with location and bigger optics.